Skills

The Echo has been around for almost 2 years longer than the Google Home though and with that comes a few advantages. Besides the home integration and IFTTT that I mentioned earlier, Echo also has Skills. These are essentially apps for the Echo that third-party developers create using the Echo API to extend its functionality.

You can test your Harry Potter knowledge, have it tell you facts about cats, and so on. Now, I personally don’t use any of these cause I think they’re a bit of a gimmick, others might actually enjoy them and Google will most likely not integrate these into Google Home, at least not like this.

Conclusion

Overall, Alexa wins with the speaker quality, but only just; Echo has skills, that I never use; and you can technically say Alexa faster than OK, Google.

Besides those things though, it’s about $50 more expensive than the Home, it has more integration than the Home at the moment for Home Automation (but that will undoubtable change in the next few months or so), and it can’t answer questions like Google can. On top of that, Google will supposedly learn from you using it’s AI and Google Assistant (and even more so if you also use Google Assistant on your phone) and will become further and further integrated with your phone for even more possible scenarios that it can help in.

Thinking of what Home will be soon versus what it and Echo are now, it’s hard to not suggest the Home over the Alexa for someone looking.

I'm David and I started this tech blog back in 2009 as a place to write down my thoughts on the crazy tech industry, talk about the latest gadgets coming out, as well as put down some tips and tricks to help others out with the tech they use every day.

Crazily, the site now has over 500k people on it sharing their love of tech every month! Nerd out with us, won't you?